School Shooting in PA

WGAL-TV
12:11 p.m. EDT October 2, 2006

Police have responded to reports of a hostage situation and multiple people shot in eastern Lancaster County at a one-room school. The scene is along the 4800 block of Mine Road near Paradise Township. News 8 reporter Anne Shannon said that the incident happened at a one-room Amish schoolhouse. She said the school is marked off with police tape. She counted 13 ambulances in the area. A helicopter was overhead and numerous fire companies were on the ground.

"This is definitely an enormous scene," Shannon said.

Lancaster General Hospital has called in all available personnel. They have been told to be prepared for a large number of patients.

News 8 is stressing that the situation does not involve the Faith Mennonite School or Bart-Colerain Elementary, which are near the scene.

Seven others were wounded in the attack, which police said appeared to be a revenge killing for an incident that occurred two decades ago.

"It seems as though he wanted to attack young female victims, and this is close to his residence, that's the only reason we can figure that he went to the school," said Comm. Jeffrey Miller, Pennsylvania State Police.

"It's a horrendous crime scene," he said.

The shooting took place at Wolf Rock School in Paradise, a school run by the Amish community with about 27 students in grades 1 through 8.

One of the children died in the arms of a trooper, Miller said.

The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, was a truck driver, said Miller. He was not Amish. He had three children, and left several notes for his family "along the lines of suicide notes," Miller said.

Police said he had barricaded himself in the schoolhouse with two-by-four and two-by-six pieces of lumber.

Fifteen male students between the ages of six and 13 were released from the school, Miller said.

At least five young girls with gunshot wounds were taken to area hospitals, a spokeswoman said.
Gunman let boys go

Miller said that during the attack, Roberts apparently told students to line up in front of the blackboard. He began to tie his female captives' feet together. Then he let the boys in the classroom leave.

Miller said Roberts also allowed an adult female who was pregnant to leave and three other adult females who had infant children with them.

At the time he let them leave, the teacher was able to get out of the schoolhouse and alert authorities, Miller said. Miller said Roberts called his wife while he was inside the school. She said that he couldn't go on any more and he was getting revenge for something that happened 20 years ago.

Lancaster General Hospital initially received three young patients, ages 6 to 15 -- one in critical condition -- and expects to receive three more patients soon, spokeswoman Kim Hatch told CNN.

Two were transferred to Hershey Medical Center and another to Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, while the fourth remains at Lancaster General, she said.

Another young female suffering from a gunshot wound to the head and right hand was taken to Reading Hospital and Medical Center, where she was in critical condition before she was transferred to Children's Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Shortly after the attack, men, women and girls in traditional Amish clothing gathered in small groups outside the country schoolhouse along a dirt road. Horse-drawn carriages could be seen in a nearby parking lot.

The attack was the nation's third deadly school shooting in a week.

On Wednesday, a 53-year-old man entered a high school in Bailey, Colorado, where he held several female students hostage at gunpoint. He shot one girl before killing himself seconds after a SWAT team stormed inside the classroom.

A high school student near Madison, Wisconsin, is suspected of fatally gunning down his principal on Friday, after he was disciplined for carrying tobacco and being bullied.

Does anyone else see a trend going on here? One school shooting, then another one, then another one, then another one, the none for a while. Personally, I think that is truly is a tragedy, but I think the amount of media attention that they receive is also partly contributing to the "copy cat" mentality. Some psycho-loner person who is depressed and feels neglected sees the amount of attention that these criminals are getting and (I would guess) envys that attention, so what do they do... go to a school and start shooting. For example, one of the more recent school shootings that happened here in NC, the first thing out of the suspect's mouth to the media was "Remember Columbine." I just feel that a lot of these crimes occur because of a "copy cat" mentality because of the attention they receive and the suspect craves that attention.

IN NO WAY AM I SUGGESTING THAT THESE INCIDENTS SHOULD BE "SWEPT UNDER THE RUG" but the constant coverage/recalling former incidents/movies/etc. that have been made about these tragedies is disturbing. Of course, this is only my opinion... in no way am I Psychologist, I'll have to call my sister and see what her ideas are, she's the Psychologist!!

NICKEL MINES, Pa. -- The Amish school where a gunman shot 10 girls last week, killing five of them, is expected to be demolished Thursday, a fire department official said.

"Tomorrow morning the school is going to be torn down," Mike Hart, a spokesman for the Bart Fire Company, said late Wednesday.

Private contractors are scheduled to start demolishing the school before dawn and will haul the debris to a landfill, a process expected to take about four hours, Hart said. "There will be no burning," he said.

The West Nickel Mines Amish School has been boarded up since Oct. 2, when gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV stormed the one-room schoolhouse, releasing 15 boys and four adults before tying up and shooting the 10 girls. Roberts, who had come armed with a shotgun, rifle, handgun and a stun gun, then killed himself.

The five wounded girls are all still believed to be hospitalized. The hospitals are no longer providing any information about the patients at the request of their families. One of the hospitals, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, announced this week it would waive the children's huge medical bills.

Hart had said previously that classes were expected to resume this week at a makeshift schoolhouse in a garage on an Amish farm in the Nickel Mines area.

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I have been to Amish country and they are super nice and friendly people and I could not agree more with FTMPTB15. I do have one question that i have never gotten an answer to though and that is where did they come up with names like Blue Balls and Intercourse for towns?